Many victims of the Nairobi terror attack had guns put to their heads -- and were shot when gunmen concluded they weren't Muslims. Gunmen with Somalia-based Al-Shabab determined the religious orientations of their captives by demanding they recite passages from the Koran.

More than 60 mall visitors and employees died. One was malaria expert Elif Yavuz, a staffer for the Clinton Foundation, who was eight months pregnant. The Harvard grad was found in the arms of her partner Ross Langdon, an architect. Both were 33 years old.

So what were the root causes of the massacre in Bill Clinton's view? Certainly not Islamist ideology. Rather, the former president echoed the narrative of the Obama administration when mourning the murder of Elif Yavuza, with whom he'd talked two weeks ago. "With Al-Shabab," Clinton explained, "I think they clearly were targeting Kenya because the Kenyans had gone into Somalia to try to stop Al-Shabab from spreading into Kenya."

Clinton might want to talk with a physics teacher from Iowa, Shawn Montgomery, who has taught at the International School of Kenya since 2004. He knew some of the massacre victims; two were young students: Nuriana Merali was killed with her mother, and Makena Kinyua was shot in the arm. Nuriana's younger brother Aliyaz also was shot in the leg but "witnessed the murder of his mother and sister," Montgomery related. He noted that the family was Muslim.

So what were the root causes the massacre according to Montgomery? He gets it, for the most part.

"There is an obvious religious dimension to this whole episode," he told the Des Moines Register. "The terrorists were attempting to 'rescue' Muslims but most of my personal mourning has been for a Muslim family I have grown to care for deeply."

Montgomery went onto express a sentiment that, sadly, ignores reality, saying: "The madness of the ideologies involved in this conflict just don't make sense when you look at this from the reality of how human cultures intersect and individuals from different religious backgrounds mix and mingle."

Nothing could be further form the truth; or as Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington observed in "The Clash of Civilizations": "Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power."

Clinton indicated that there's no need to worry about Al-Shabab spreading to America -- yet reports are emerging that Somali-American men from Minneapolis may have been involved in the attack.  
 
Montgomery said of his dead student: "I have had so many students in my career as an educator, but I must say that Nuriana was special. I still waffle in and out of a state of denial that she is gone."

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton and his ideological soul mates waffle over the roots causes of the outrage -- an attitude that makes America more vulnerable to the same outrage that visited Kenya.